Now we know why Republicans are shaking in their shoes. It’s not the usual DC-Beltway cowardice, but an all-encompassing terror campaign against them(and us.) Barack Obama has pulled out the “Zombie Apocalypse” option from his playbook, and it makes this weekend’s malfunction of EBTs seem like a test, or a demonstration. This President talks about blackmail, but that’s all he does. Now, he’s threatening to stop EBT deposits for 1 November, 2013, in order to scare Republicans into a deal. He’s threatening riots. Now you know at least one more part of the hammer he’s using against Republicans.

After witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall, and indeed, the collapse of the entire border frontier between East and West firsthand near the end of my military service, I thought those days marked the final death-knell of communism around the world. In more than two decades since those days of hope, as it seemed the globe might begin to abandon the plots and schemes of the central planners, what I witnessed is that rather than take the hard-learned lessons forward with us from then until now, we’ve forgotten them. Discredited and defeated, communism should have been dead, but it’s not gone away after all. In the last several years, it has made a resurgence, as the generational memories of the terror it brought upon the globe fade, and younger generations fall prey to the song of the socialist sirens. With communism and its more socially acceptable forms, “socialism” and “progressivism” making a comeback, it should be a surprise to read that the French Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, announces in spittle-laden bellicosity that the rich fleeing France for Belgium to escape the high taxes should be considered less than patriotic. Reading the translation of his remarks, one can only wonder how long it will be before France, like the Soviet Union before it, erects walls to prevent its most successful people, or even people seeking simple freedom from leaving.

When one reads of remarks like this, when armed with even a modicum of historical understanding, one must recognize the frightening threat of a return to the darkest days our world has yet known. How far from Prime Minister Ayrault’s thinking are the gulags and concentration camps? Certainly, he’s not proposed such a thing…yet. Still, in the manner of his speaking, one can see the manifestation of the same old demons being raised up, under the same old guise, and with the same ugly motive. Perhaps worst of all, in castigating those wealthy people leaving France, among them notably the famed French actor Gerard Dépardieu, Ayrault’s accusation is that the wealthy who flee are suffering from a lack of generosity. This is quite obviously a sick attempt at reversing the guilt onto the innocent, but it’s no surprise from a government now headed by President Francois Hollande, who declared infamously that he didn’t “like the rich.” The reeking pomposity of socialist dictators-in-waiting has never known more hypocrisy.

In our own country, Barack Obama is continuing that same trend, and the long-time leftist slogan “Eat the Rich” seems near to being implemented in full. At the rate things are progressing toward a complete worker’s paradise here in the United States, it’s only a matter of time before he decides we need a border fence after all, not to keep illegals out, but to make sure that none may leave. As the Europeans continue to build their coming continental concentration camp, from which only the powerful like Hollande and Ayrault will be afforded the chance to flee, Obama is building another right here, and he’s feeding the lap-dog press the same deceptive and hypocritical banter about the rich, as his family enjoys a multi-million dollar holiday in the state of his [alleged] birth. (Like most Marxists, I suspect he was actually hatched.)

How long will it be before we see the return of the barbed wire and fortifications, complete with machine gun nests, not to defend a country, but to keep its enslaved people from leaving? With the spreading, grotesque mindset of communism once again spreading like black mold on a too-long neglected basement wall, it seems history is poised to once again repeat itself, because while a people may learn a given lesson by living it, they do a poor job of conveying those lessons to their children. Worse, they pay for their children to be indoctrinated by the very mindset they overcame, and more is the pity and travesty that the education establishment will have served not as the instrument of our protection, but the weapon by which the communist sappers undermined our cultural and intellectual fortifications.

You might have come to think it is an exaggeration to suggest that those now in power in France could build a wall, but one ought to consider the words of some of their politicians, as quote in the Telegraph:

“Socialist MP Yann Galut called for the actor to be “stripped of his nationality” if he failed to pay his dues in his mother country, saying the law should be changed to enable such a punishment.”

The idea that a politician is seeking to punish people in this way is not a novelty, but it isn’t lost on most conservatives that the underlying meaning is purely tyrannical. Meanwhile, another government official had this to say:

“Benoît Hamon, the consumption minister, said the move amounted to giving France “the finger” and was “anti-patriotic”.”

Setting aside the fact of this man’s preposterous title, one must wonder at the sheer idiocy of a country that revels in revolution but cannot rise even to defend its own borders. Being partly of French heritage, I can’t but imagine that my ancestors who came to North America sought the freedoms their countrymen now forsake, and I am mightily grateful that they saw fit to do so, but I am simultaneously disgusted at the fact that so many of their descendants now seem willing to forsake liberty here. Communism isn’t dead after all, but tempting us to believe it permitted them to make inroads, and I don’t know if they can be stopped.

With darkness and depression enveloping the globe, it is time to remember the wall between East and West, because we may yet see its resurrection on a global scale. It’s also time to reconsider whether we should have let so much of the wall be destroyed. Demolishing it meant that the visible scar upon the face of civilization has been removed, and while the wall itself may have gone for a time, the mindset that had built it now thrives around the globe. If we are to dismantle communism again, it must not be its mere instruments that we remove, but its entire philosophical base. It must be placed and kept on ice like a virus stored as a hedge against the need to redevelop new vaccines in case of a new outbreak.

I was born in the 1960s, just as Congress and Lyndon Johnson launched a new war. The war raged on, and the amount of money spent was unprecedented. Never before had so much money been thrown at a war, but the enemy refused to relent. Money bled out of our treasury, and the futures of so many young Americans were wrecked. The cost to the nation was measured in its tragic affects on our culture, as well as our financial standing, and since that war commenced, America has never been the same. In most cases, the left can’t wait to shut down a failed war once it’s taken up by Republican Presidents, but this war was different. This was a war they would continue to wage, despite all of the evidence that they were making no ground against an intransigent and intractable enemy. Failure didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Infiltrations? No matter. Destroyed morale? Just another burden to be borne by the American people. Ladies and gentlemen, no war in history has cost so much or produced so little as the war commenced in earnest by President Johnson, and yet no war in American history has seen such a commitment of resources. Naturally, I speak not of Vietnam that ended in the 1975, but instead of the counterproductive “war on poverty” that continues to this day, with no hint of success in sight.

In the five decades of the declared “War on Poverty,” there hasn’t been a President who hasn’t spurred it along, and there hasn’t been a Congress that did not act to expand it. We have spent money in the range of some $15-20 Trillion on the various means-tested entitlement and welfare programs over that period. It’s fair to say the number is at least on par with our current national debt, and yet for all the screaming by Democrats over the cost of the war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan, neither approach the colossal sum poured into the welfare systems and programs of this nation. In fact, you can combine the total of defense and war spending over that same period and not arrive at an equal sum. My question for Democrats, as well as for “compassionate conservatives” is simply this: When do you admit that this war had been a complete and utter failure, more fruitless than any you’ve enlisted our country to fight?

At this late date, we have more people in poverty, and enrolled in these poverty programs than ever before. If the purpose of these programs had been to give people a “hand up,” how long ago should we have expected them to take it? One in six Americans is receiving food-stamps. One in six! One in seven is enrolled in Medicaid. More than half the nation’s children receive free or reduced-price lunches and breakfasts at school, all funded by federal dollars. The number of people living in government-furnished or government-financed housing is outrageous. If the United States had been involved in a war stretching across the span of a half-century, yielding no improvement in the state of our security, the leftists in this nation would be terminally apoplectic. We can’t so much as deploy troops to battle terrorists without the left losing its collective hive-mind.

If one were to view warfare as an investment in the future of a county, one could justify the first Gulf War on the basis that it at least restored the free flow of oil at market prices that permitted the nation to enjoy most of a decade of relative prosperity. If you evaluate the so-called “War on Poverty” by the same criteria, a serious economist would note that it had only made the nation poorer. In real terms, we have more people in poverty, and a system that is designed to increase the number who will languish in that state. In truth, most of the people receiving the bounty of the welfare state are living as well as people who earn 150% of the poverty level, and we now provide hand-outs of every description to so many people that they have begun to outnumber producers.

If it is the standard policy of Democrats and their cohort leftist groups to abandon a failed war, why are they not protesting on the streets? Why are they not screaming and chanting and having die-ins on the streets, not wearing the garb of massacred civilians, as is their usual ploy, but instead wearing the clothing of all those who work for a living? That’s who they’re killing. The people being rewarded by this system are not the people who’ve earned it. Instead, the people who earned the bounty that is being redistributed are being victimized by the Democrats, but also by their friends who are the self-described “compassionate conservatives” in the Republican Party. Is their compassion with the money of others so thoroughly blinding that they are now unable to see what it is they have wrought? Rather than elevate people from poverty, giving them the needed “hand up,” what they have accomplished is to create a permanent underclass that largely only fits that definition to the extent of their earnings, but no longer by their standard of living.

The wretched tragedy of this failed War on Poverty might be forgiven if one were to believe it had been the accidental consequence of good intentions, but it is not. No rational person can evaluate the failed results that have characterized our national effort to reduce poverty, ten years in, twenty years in, or thirty years in, somebody ought to have recognized that this is not working. It can’t work, in fact, but if you support programs of this sort after you’ve watched their perennial failures for the span of a half-century, one can scarcely conclude that the advocates of such a system had been motivated by benevolence. While the “War on Poverty” has been a thorough failure, their other war has been a rousing success: The entirety of this system is part of the extended political warfare against the American people. The idea is to break us, and it’s working, so that at long last, they have succeeded in making us vulnerable to every conceivable threat. If the real goal isn’t to cure poverty, but instead to impoverish the American people both in material and liberty, the war of the statists against America has been a rousing success. We believed they were fighting a war on poverty, but the lengthening line of economic corpses tells another story. There will be no flag-dropped coffins in this war, and no one will salutes its victims, eventually to be measured in the tens or hundreds of millions in shattered dreams and wasted lives. Too generous and trusting to perceive the objective of their attackers, most Americans didn’t understand that all along, it had been a war for poverty.

I’ve written and re-written this piece a number of times, in part because I don’t wish to cause undo angst, but also in part because I don’t wish to cause too little. You can blame Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Congresses past and present, or Ben Bernanke and his predecessors for all it matters, because in the context and scope of your life, it won’t make much difference. We are headed for a complete collapse, and the collapse is no longer some vague notion in some nebulous, faraway universe of remote possibilities. At least one analyst has concluded that by 2014, at the latest, this country is going to enter a period of economic turmoil that will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a garden party. The media won’t tell you this, whether CNN or the New York Times; neither FoxNews nor the Wall Street Journal. We are staring directly at the muzzle of a colossal gun, and it’s aimed at the heads of every American, but neither the current President nor the current Congress will tell you how bad it has become. For two generations or more, the hand-writing has been on the wall, but unlike ordinary ink that will fade with the passage of time, this bit of script has become bolder, heavier and finally, indelible. There will be no avoiding it. There will be no escape. This time, we will go down, and we may well never stage a comeback. The gun is aimed at our heads, and we loaded it.

To understand this will take a little time, although regular readers of this site will know most if not all of the gory details. For a brief primer on what will soon confront us, please take a look at this report on Hyperinflation at John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics website. It’s lengthy, but it is information every American should learn and know, because while it is a bit of a reading chore, particularly for those whose eyes glaze over at the first hint of economic and financial terminology, it is nevertheless important information, and Williams does a remarkable job of not allowing the material to become overly dry. His report really doesn’t need any dressing-up or embellishment to be terrifying.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news beyond the international developments of the last few days, you will not have missed the fact that today, the US credit rating was again down-graded again by Egan Jones. You should expect this trend to continue for some time, but this downgrade, like the last round of them a little more than one year ago, really doesn’t tell us anything we should not have known: Our currency is on the verge of collapse, and our ability to repay debt is becoming more challenged, but the fools in Washington DC don’t tell you about it because they’re afraid if you knew how bad it really is, you might react badly. In the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, the governments portrayed did their best to keep their respective impending disasters secret for as long as possible. The thinking was: If it’s inevitable, such that all we can do is make things worse between now and the impact(s) by disclosing it in advance, we should say nothing until the last possible moment. Another way of looking at this is the question I once posited:

“The government is spending like there’s no tomorrow. What if there isn’t?”

The fact is that we don’t need Hollywood or the Mayans to provide apocalyptic scenarios to fulfill this role in our immediate future. Our Federal Reserve(hereafter, simply “the Fed”) in concert with our Federal government have created something nearly as disastrous, and potentially, every bit as deadly. As Ben Bernanke uses his powers as Chairman of the Fed to undertake another round of quantitative easing. As you’ll remember from previous rounds of this same tactic, this amounts to money printing, a way to inject more cash into the market in the attempt to stimulate lending and business activity. The problem is that each time this is done, what actually happens is that the value of the dollar falls versus commodities such as oil, or other energy sources, and the cost of everything increases. When this happens, it makes it harder for business to operate, harder for consumers to spend such cash as they may have, and otherwise has precisely the exact opposite effect, all while driving us closer to the brink. Bernanke is trying to drive us away from a deflationary cycle that could result if the economy stalls too steeply, but the problem is that he’s going to cause what will be infinitely worse.

At the same time, our Congress and our President have added to the problem, because each time they borrow money, the Fed is printing it into existence. In short, both our fiscal and monetary policies are rigged in favor of inflation, and with all the money-printing, it is only a matter of time before the dollar becomes completely worthless in the world market. Any small displacement in the market could lead to our economic demise. Williams’ report for 2012 goes so far as to suggest that you concentrate on bare survival strategies, and defending yourself in the face of complete political and social disintegration.

I know that you’ve been reading about a “financial cliff” somewhere in the distant and murky future, but what I’m telling you to do at this point is that the veil of fog is beginning to lift because that future is no longer distant. Williams’ report explains thoroughly the main causes of our impending doom, and this isn’t some conspiracy nut. When he published this update earlier this year, his warnings sounded eerily like my own, and also those of a few other people who have been sounding the alarm, including some in talk radio, in conservative media, and notably, Governor Palin. At the time of the announcement of QE2, Gov. Palin did a rather bold thing: She announced to the world the dangers and the certain results. Naturally, since her evaluation was based on sound economic understanding, her conclusions might well have seemed prophetic in light of all that has happened since. The truth is that she was merely telling you what must be based on the immutable laws of the universe: There are no free lunches…or anything.

I believe this is one of the reasons the Republican leadership in Congress has done nothing to substantially obstruct President Obama’s agenda. It is true that they would have faced some political consequences, but what’s more the case is that they are every bit as aware of the impending collapse as anybody in the executive branch. One might view Congress cynically, and suppose they are “getting while the getting’s good,” and there’s no doubt that some of that goes on, but it’s also true that the problem is so gargantuan that they do not see how they can correct it without throwing the country into complete chaos, and since that’s what’s coming anyway, they see no point in hurrying the matter.

Some have concluded that Bernanke is taking this up now in order to try to help Obama’s re-election, and while there may be some truth to it, the fact is that the situation has been and remains much worse than you’re being told by the media. We have been in a bottom-bouncing depression since at least 2009, and nothing has animated us very far from the floor. As I have written many times, they stimulate via the printing press and the deficit, and we get a brief improvement, but then the increased costs in the market come home to roost, and we’re set back to a place no better than before as the costs, driven in large measure by the inflationary effects of the stimulus that quickly act as a brake upon the alleged “recovery” that never materializes.

Elsewhere on Williams’ site, you can find a detailed examination of his treatment of unemployment, and the numbers will shock you. Add to this the tidbits about the deficit and inflation, and you will begin to understand how you’ve been misled, not only by the media and the administration, but also by decades of shoulder-shrugging politicians in both parties. By Williams’ assessment, it may be impossible to rescue our nation any longer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been urging you since the inception of this blog to make preparations to the best of your abilities. I hope you’ve been diligent. Check out Williams’ Hyperinflation report, and think it through carefully. The evidence of your own daily lives has been telling you all of the happy-talk about “economic recovery” had been a farce. Like the approach of a colossal asteroid, the government’s ability to hide the impending disaster or disguise the seriousness of our worsening situation has begun to fail. That is really the only significant meaning of the latest downgrade. They can’t hide it much longer. The Piper will be paid.

Some are choosing to ignore all of this in the hope that a change of administration might give us one last chance at a way out, but irrespective of the outcome in November, the chances that our currency survives three more years in its current form is probably fewer than one in ten. The possibility that we will survive as a nation may be somewhat less. Fixing this problem will require the institution of spending cuts on a scale that may cause complete social collapse. Do we expect John Boehner to take on such a monumental chore? Even if the Republicans take the Senate, Mitch McConnell isn’t exactly the picture of courageous and vigorous leadership.

Saving our nation is no longer simply a political problem in the sense of replacing certain politicians. It’s a cultural and economic crisis as well, and with all that is going on abroad, it may come down to a matter of literal survival. It’s time that we begin to face up to this, because our politicians aren’t going to address the problem until it no longer matters, at which point, they’ll do nothing, but we’ll pay the price. We always do. People have asked me what we could do to remedy the problem, but when I tell them, they look away, because they don’t want to face the implications that attend the proposed actions.

At present, we have an annual published deficit of around $1.3 Trillion. As Mr. Williams’ report makes plain, if the government were forced to use GAAP(Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) in their accounting, the actual annual deficit is in the neighborhood of $5 Trillion. The added $3.7 Trillion consists of new future obligations that the government does not pay, but has promised at some future date. Many refer to these as the “unfunded liabilities” of our government, but they add up to a staggering amount, in the range of $80 to $120 Trillion dollars in promises. When one makes promises on this scale, it is sure to affect one’s creditworthiness, never mind one’s credit rating.

Consider the fact that our government collects approximately $2.5 Trillion in taxes, fees, and the like throughout the year, but that this is still well short of the $3.8 Trillion it spends, and then propose cuts in response. Here’s a dirty, ugly secret the DC crowd won’t point out to you: If you cut everything that is not an entitlement program or debt service, you would still have a deficit. That’s right, if you eliminated every bureaucrat, soldier, judge, roads project, education expenditure, and all of the other things that government does apart from pay interest on its debt or send payments to individuals through entitlement programs, you could not balance the budget.

What this makes clear is that the problem exists not on the “discretionary” line of the ledger, but entirely on the “non-discretionary” lines in the book. Leftists will argue that the problem is the lack of revenues, but that’s an absurd hoax. Anything done to increase revenues at this point will actually cause them to decline. Increased tax rates? People will earn less to avoid the taxes. Even those who want to earn more won’t be able to because there will be insufficient demand in the marketplace to provide the commerce needed to generate the revenues we have now.

The only answer to this problem is sharp cuts in government spending, combined with a cessation of Quantitative Easing. The entitlement programs have become such a massive anchor on our economy that it cannot recover, and they have squeezed out all other spending. This is why people look away when you explain to them the problem. They know what it implies about all of our sacred cows in the entitlement sector of government. As with the old lament, everybody is in favor of massive government cuts until we arrive at their favorite Federal program. At that point, you are given a stack of excuses, complaints, and ultimately: “Never mind.”

I have news for you, and it’s not pleasant: These programs will end. Virtually all of them. None of them will survive in their current form, if at all. We are like Greece, only worse, and much larger. The question our elected leaders have not faced is whether to break the news to us now, while there is some small hope of recovery, or whether they shall just “get while the getting’s good,” and make off in the dark of night after the collapse, leaving us to figure it out. The fact is that I can’t blame them for opting toward the latter, because we will be worse than Greece in every dimension and measure, both in size, but also in degree, and I believe when a responsible politician ever tells this truth, he will be pilloried, at first in media, and then later by mobs. Paul Ryan has had just the first taste of this. Sarah Palin was mocked for such warnings to an extent I’ve never seen for simply stating the dangers of QE2 and all the money-printing. She was right, naturally, as is Paul Ryan on the matter of entitlements.

The problem is now that it may be too late for any sort of remediation. The problem has become too vast, and it is as late as that. What we can do as individuals is to grasp the reality laid out before us. We can prepare ourselves and our families. We can vote accordingly. We can make noise about it. In the end, we may be forced to watch our nation slide back into the pre-industrial, pre-republican muck from which it emerged. It’s been a long decline, and we’ve mostly done little but to urge it on as a people. We’re peering down the loaded barrel, and it’s been our finger’s twitch upon which we are waiting.

Every doctor in America who is worth his or her salt should quit. Apparently, given the impending implementation of Obama-care, they’ve been contemplating it. How many? Eighty-three percent! Unfortunately, most of them will not quit, and more is the shame because if we want to defeat Obama-care, that’s the way it could be done. That, or the statists would need to unmask completely and simply enact in law what they intend: Health-care professionals, from doctors to nurses to orderlies must now be the slaves of the state. If you think this is an overstatement, consider the facts. When you are forbidden from negotiating your wages, and must accept whatever some bureaucrat tells dictates, you are a slave. You can pretty it up any way you like, but that’s where all of this will lead. Eventually, those skilled enough, smart enough, and diligent enough to be doctors will realize they would be better off doing something else. Instead, the ranks of doctors and nurses will begin to be filled with the incompetent, the slothful, and the under-qualified. This is what always happens under socialized medicine, and every one of these would-be slaves has the same moral right to refuse this servitude, and the sooner they do, the better the chance that they will spawn a movement in opposition.

If you’re not a doctor or nurse, and you’re not a skilled radiologist, and you haven’t the foggiest about how to operate an MRI machine, you might want to hold on a moment before joyfully proclaiming your new “right to medical care” under the Affordable Care Act(a.k.a “Obama-care.”) Those who foolishly believe they will maintain some form of private health insurance over the longer haul ought to pay attention too. Let us imagine everybody has insurance, as the Utopian masterminds behind Obama-care promise. Then what? It is not only money that can be inflated out of all value. An insurance to purchase a service that is in shortage isn’t much of an insurance, is it? Imagine having auto insurance of this sort. You have your fender-bender, and your insurance company estimates the damages, sending you out in search of a shop to perform the repairs. What if you can’t find one? What if you sit there with the check from your insurer, satisfying your claim in full, but there exists no shop to perform the work, or so few, that you will be without your vehicle for weeks or months, or perhaps longer. How will you maintain your job? How will you get to the grocery store?

Naturally, if you’re a welfare leech, you’re not much worried about that, but if you’re a working American with bills to pay, you’d better begin to think about it now. Under Obama-care, slowly, but surely, this will become the inevitable conclusion: Care will be of poorer quality, more scarce, and since everybody will have their coverage, there will be no advantage by offering more in payment. How long before a black-market medical system develops? Do you deny the possibility of all of this? Are you stuck on the notions of what you have known, rather than what can(and likely will) now come to pass? What happens when it’s your six-year-old daughter down at the emergency room with a fractured wrist, in a line that stretches up and down the hallways and side corridors, because there exists a severe shortage of medical professionals? Will your wishes mute your daughter’s agony?

You think doctors and nurses are endless, bottomless pits of human compassion, but they’re not, and no person is, because it’s simply not possible. More, if you want their compassion, shouldn’t you offer them yours? Why do you wish to have them work as slaves to your needs? Isn’t that what this whole corrupt system has become? Tax-payers must be slaves. Doctors and nurses and orderlies must be slaves. Everybody must be slaves but he who has nothing to offer, and no intention of offering it, since he has no intention of obtaining it by his own efforts.

Am I being too crass, and too obnoxiously terse in my appraisal? Brother, you haven’t seen the half of it yet. Wait until doctors are unionized, since it will be the only way to protect their diminishing wages, and they look at you and your suffering child, parent, or spouse and say simply: “I’m on break.” At the ends of their shifts, they will walk away, as carelessly as the country has walked away from them. What do you think is the meaning about the endless delays in Medicare payments, and the inaction of Congress year after year in adjusting reimbursements to doctors? Were I a physician, I wouldn’t have a single patient who is in a government system of any sort. Why would one wish to accept patients whose payment will always be less than it ought to be, while robbing from paying patients in order to subsidize the government-paid accounts?

Imagine running any other enterprise like this for long. All of your paying customers would abandon you. You wouldn’t be able to carry off this sort of con-game, because they’d price-shop the matter and move briskly to another provider, whether the product is a widget or the service is the measurement of blood-pressure. What Obama-care offers, and indeed what all forms of socialized medicine promise is to deliver something many people desperately want without regard to their ability to pay. That’s it, in a nutshell, and if I were a physician, I’d be looking to set up a clinic somewhere off-shore where I could live out my life unmolested by big government mandates. Nobody should be compelled to labor. Neither you, nor I, and certainly not doctors. We’d better begin to consider if we wish to coerce the people who we expect to save our lives.

Back in 1978, Dr. Milton Friedman discussed all of this at length. I’ve provided his talk on the matter, in six pieces, here:

I have heard and read a good deal about a UN Convention on Small Arms Trade, a Treaty that some allege could ultimately result in the banning of firearms held by private citizens in the United States. While I’m not certain that such a treaty could affect domestic gun rights, the idea is that such a treaty, ratified by the Senate, effectively becomes Constitutional law. This argument is based on the notion that when the US enters into a treaty, it’s binding upon the government just like a constitutional amendment, although there are existing precedents in opposition to that view, including Reid v. Covert. Imagining that such a treaty would disparage our 2nd Amendment rights, were such a thing to eventuate, who doubts but that some leftist in charge would enforce it as such, or that a Supreme Court led by the likes of John Roberts would uphold it as superseding our 2nd Amendment? Who doubts that a Congress led by such cowards as now occupy those positions would subserviently enact all the funding mechanisms to support enforcement? Rep. Benjamin Quayle(R-AZ,) and co-sponsor Todd Akin(R-MO) have introduced the Second Amendment Sovereignty Act of 2012, (H.R. 5846,) in response to this threat. It’s going nowhere.

The Treaty in question is being written as we speak, and while we don’t know its content, anything that would impinge upon our domestic rights would be a real attack on the Second Amendment the likes of which would be unprecedented in American history. Then again, Obama-care was an attack on individual liberties unprecedented in history. Clearly, that there exists no precedent does not preclude a thing from being done, does it? All my life, I have heard a fair number of oaths including the phrase “my cold, dead hands,” that being the condition in which the persons professing said sentiment would enter before their guns would be taken from them. I’m not a betting man, but I personally believe most would turn in their guns without much more than a whimper. I think a diabolical leader of ill intent would know that too, and I believe he’d be willing to test the thesis. My question for you is simply: “Would Americans actually fight?”

This has always been my question, in fact, because I’ve been around long enough to know that many will say things that sound awfully tough, in terribly solemn tones in the first instance, but that most won’t live up to the billing in the second. Most mature people are relatively risk-averse, and when they consider handing over their guns to maintain a nervous peace versus the idea of actually beginning a second war for Independence against an[other] aggressive government, I think most so-called “fearless Patriots” might just chicken out. After all, by a slow process of incrementalism, the American people have let many of their liberties go without much more than a protest march or two, and not much more than a temporary backlash at the polls. I believe a rabid Marxist holding the reins of power would realize this too, as would his committed communist pals, and I think such a leader would be more than willing to go all the way and call some bluffs. In fact, I think such a villain would see it as a win-win: If he calls the bluffs of the American people on this and they should happen to fold, he would have rid the country of guns, and made the American people defenseless in their own homes. If he calls the bluffs, but they turn out not to be a bluff, he would have a good excuse to declare martial law, perhaps cancel elections, and wipe out a few hard-core conservatives along the way, if there is anything less than a perfectly united stance by American conservatives.

You might wonder why I am raising this issue now, and it surely arises in part from the recent talk over the treaty in question, but I am also asking the question because I’ve seen signs that we have no small number of surrender monkeys who call themselves “conservative.” If the day should ever arrive when gun confiscations actually begin, and there is a resistance, it will fail if conservatives don’t act – not talk – in lockstep. That would be a big play by by such a tyrant, for all the marbles, but it would also be a big play by Americans. It would be truly a matter of pledging their “lives and their sacred honor,” because any such battle would commence a counter-counter-revolution. What you learn from a lifetime of observation is that he who is more consistently committed wins every battle, every war, and every fight of any sort. This is why I have cause to worry: I think many people make many professions by which may not abide when push comes to shove.

After all, if such a resistance were to break out, you would scarcely receive news of it. Such a leader would use that new Internet shut-down switch to cut off that means of news dissemination. He would order the FCC to shut down all cell phones, and shortly, all wired calls, broadcast, cable and satellite, along with radio, and the only thing you might be able to dial would be 9-1-1, or if you had a shortwave radio, begin to exchange information before the jamming commenced in earnest . It’s what emergency exercises are intended to test. Remember? Neither would be trusted all law enforcement, nor all military. Too many are Oath-Keepers(though not nearly enough for my comfort.) What would result after a day or two is that the brain-addled multitudes would demand the restoration of their cable, their Internet, their phones, and their blessed text messages, so they would join the chorus from the left to put down any rebellion. Think about it. Fools all, yes, but fools who would provide a runaway government with every excuse it might ever need.

Every person must establish his or her own bright line across which government must not tread, or admit from the outset that he or she is a willing slave, but in the main, they do not admit it, and they make their lines dimly, and cover them over in hasty retreat when pressed. The singularly most pressing reason to raise this at this time is that I believe too few have actually considered all those oaths about “cold dead hands,” and what they would actually demand. After all, what that phrase implies is a willingness to literally enter a state of war against a runaway government that would claim legitimacy by virtue of some black-robed moron’s judgment, or some heat-of-the-moment command from a would-be tyrant. Any who take such things too lightly wouldn’t be the sort to be counted on in any case, because anybody who conceives of such things without deep prior contemplation of consequences isn’t very serious about it. Australia was a nifty experiment for the global gun-grabbers, and they saw how the cold-dead-handers reacted there. In a virtual flash, Australia was disarmed. Has Australia undergone a violent revolution? Have they repealed such measures? If so, I’ve not read about it.

If you wonder what the radical communist left would count on, considering the hundreds of millions of guns and the eighty-million or more firearm owners as an obstacle to their plotting, you might wish to give a thought or two to this. While alleged patriots who may or may not adhere to all of those oaths continue to make them, the radical left is surely plotting for the day in which they will make this a reality. Larry Grathwohl’s story of three decades ago hasn’t changed, and some of the very people about whom he had been concerned are now members of government. The question is whether they’ve thought this through, and I believe you can assume they have, and that’s something upon which I’m willing to bet. Our founders must have been much more extraordinarily brave than we credit them with having been. Now go consider all those oaths anew. Did you really mean them? Time may tell. Something to ponder.

In what can only be termed the greatest abandonment of our Constitution by a sitting Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act was upheld. This decision heralds the end of the Constitutional Republic, the rule of law, and the American way of life. This decision is a treason against the Constitution, the American people, and the entire notion of liberty that had enabled our national development and prosperity. No American is safe from government, under any conceivable circumstance, and none should falsely believe that they might find relief at the bar of justice in the United States any longer. This decision announces a new form of anarchy, whereby the officials of government have become participants in lawless behavior, ruling in contravention of the founding supreme law of the land, while carrying on a grotesque charade by which they pretend to have followed a law that does not and has never existed. The Supreme Court has upheld the mandate as a tax.

Chief Justice John Roberts has betrayed the Constitution. At least he’ll be popular on the cocktail party circuit.

To understand what has happened, the individual mandate has been defeated as a command to individuals, but not as a tax on individuals. In other words, the court has held that the mandate is a tax that can be levied on individuals, but individuals cannot be forced to buy health insurance. Put another way, the Supreme Court has said that while you cannot be forced to purchase health insurance, but that you can be forced to pay more (extra) taxes if you do not.

The entire healthcare bill has otherwise been upheld.

In short, the country is dead. They can force you to pay a tax for failing to purchase bubble-gum. They can do anything they like. Congress and the President can enact any law they please. You are now slaves, completely. It’s time to become accustomed to it, and I am hearing conservatives who are surrendering even on the concept of repeal.

Rampage, or whimper? I suspect most will choose the latter.

I reject this opinion. I reject this court. I reject the entirety of this anarchical government.

Our country is in crisis, but at present, we have no leader emerging to save the union, and it seems there will be no Abraham Lincoln to save the nation. Barack Obama is more like his long-ago predecessor, James Buchanan, who was put in place by his party, the Democrats, to protect the institution of slavery. Obama is in that position, as his job has been to protect and grow the welfare state, and in much the same way as Buchanan, it may be a case before the Supreme Court that defines his presidency. If Barack Obama and the Democrats have their way, the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act(Obama-care) thus defining the character and inevitable course of the nation, much as in 1857, Justice Taney’s ruling upholding slavery in the Dred Scott case set the nation on a course to civil war. The difference was that in 1857, the court held that federalism applied, and in 2012, Barack Obama’s justice department is demanding that the 10th Amendment and the entire notion of States’ rights be ignored. There may only be one way in which this issue is finally settled, and it may require war.

In 1860, the budding Republican party sought to set the question on slavery right, the abolitionists in the North propelling Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Lincoln had the distinction of overseeing the abolition of slavery, but to do so he would need to fight a war. In much the same way, if Republicans are to begin abolishing the soft slavery of the welfare state, beginning with Obama-care, they will need to elect a leader prepared to wage war in defense of a principle. After all, in 1860, the South was entrenched in the notion of keeping the institution of legal slavery, but the abolitionists knew that could not be permitted to stand. In 2012, faced with a Supreme Court case that may well decide the future of the country, we wait to see if the court will act to save the country, or fail to defend the principles enshrined in the constitution as they did in the Dred Scott case one-hundred-fifty-five years ago.

People have falsely compared Obama to Lincoln, thinking his stance on the supremacy of the central government over the states is the most pressing comparison, but this simply isn’t the case. What will save our republic now is not more government but less, and not fewer freedoms but more, and in this sense, Barack Obama has nothing in common with Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln thought that it was impossible to better the lives of some men by subjecting other men to ruin:

“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, “Reply to New York Workingmen’s Democratic Republican Association” (March 21, 1864), pp. 259-260.

Clearly, Lincoln was not interested in Obama’s updated form of enslavement, and yet that is the central crisis that will confront this nation in the 2012 elections, and for some years to come. Nobody can say with certainty what will be the final tipping point, but if this nation continues apace, it will plunge into anarchy and civil war, but this time, the government is likely to be on the side of the slavers.

There is something fundamentally flawed in the thinking of those who argue that this is just the natural progression of nations, because what they argue is that Americans are neither wise enough, nor even capable of sufficient self-control to attempt to restrain intemperate desires for wealth derived from naked expropriation, but I submit this is not true, at least not yet, and that we must not permit it to become true. Once we cross that invisible plane, the ramifications will be known with little delay, as the country you had known and loved and labored to propel disappears into the fog of a war from which only savagery may emerge.

Let us not pretend that we can’t imagine what will happen in such a scenario, but let us not delude ourselves into the beautiful lie that tells us it will somehow resolve by other, less painful means. Von Clauswitz said that war is politics by another means, and I am here to tell you that politics is just the precursor to war in such a context as the one in which our nation now persists. All of the political rancor we now experience would be replaced by open warfare, at least for a time, in the scenario I am describing. That our slate of Republican candidates might not see this is disturbing enough, but that our front-runner intentionally avoids seeing it is frankly inexcusable. Of those now in the nomination fight, I think Gingrich is most apt to understand what’s at stake, because his knowledge of history may permit him to see the warning signs with a clarity the others are neither inclined nor perhaps able to see.

Gingrich has a fine understanding of the Civil War, and he certainly knows the history of the period, and how the nation arrived in that predicament. I think Gingrich also understands that our current predicament is in some ways worse, because whereas in 1861, Lincoln put the government in service of the proposition that all men were created equal, we now have a government committed to the notion that it is the job of government to compel an equality of results.

This is the nature of the grave danger we now face, and it is every bit as dangerous as 1860, but perhaps with the added danger that we now have a president who is part of the problem. Put another way, imagine that in 1861, it had been a President from the South who instead caused t he Northern delegations to Congress to walk out, and had engaged in a brutal war to compel Northern states to the “peculiar institution” that had been slavery. That’s what we now face, as Barack Obama seeks to impose his own form of slavery on the American people.

This is why I insist that this election year is not like 1980, or even 1932. This election is most like 1860, and if we don’t find a candidate with the common sense and righteous aims of Lincoln, it may have been in vain that we exercised our vote. If we are to preserve this republic, we will need leaders who are willing to wage even war in defense of individual liberty. That certainly won’t be Barack Obama, and it surely won’t be Mitt Romney, leaving us to ponder whether it is even possible to save our union once more.

Andrew Breitbart managed to get his hands on some video of an Occupy strategy session, and in this video, SEIU skunk Stephen Lerner says that there can be no co-existence of Capitalism and “True Democracy.” Here’s the problem, and it’s one patriotic Americans need to grasp: Occupy is right. Now, before you go off the deep end to suggest that I’m losing my mind, because in this case, I agree with Occupy Wall Street, I would like you to watch the video. It’s important to understand what they’re saying so I can explain to you why they are right.

Here’s the video:

The problem we have is that most Americans have been mis-educated to believe that the United States is a democracy. It’s not. It never has been, and it was never supposed to be a democracy. Democracy is merely organized mob-rule under color of law. The United States was constituted as a representative republic, as demonstrated by the words of our own founding document, the US Constitution, in Article IV, Section 1:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government“(emphasis added)

This is a part of our constitution that is often ignored, and one that is often side-stepped by leftists because they cannot tolerate the notion that we have a republican form of government by design, and by the intentions of our framers. They understood that democracy was a horrid wrecking machine that destroys individual liberty, and is ever the precursor to tyranny. What a democracy ultimately permits, but what a representative republic is structured to forbid is the voting away of rights of some minority, including the smallest minority that is an individual. The whole purpose of the strong requirements on amending the constitution, or replacing it via a constitutional convention is specifically to make the destruction of individual rights exceedingly difficult.

What we have seen over the last century is a concerted effort to turn the US into a democracy of sorts. Capitalism cannot operate where there are not strong protections of individual rights, including the right to property, or one’s sovereignty in the marketplace. What Stephen Lerner and the rest of the Occupy Wall Street crowd understand is that there can be no “true democracy” while capitalism still lives. In short, it’s a recognition of the fact that the mob-rule that is implicit in democracy is prohibited in order to make capitalism possible.

What makes capitalism work is that you have the right to your property, exclusively, with no valid claim upon it by society at large. That’s why the income tax was pawned off on the American people with the 16th Amendment almost a century ago: The idea was to wreck your legitimate hold over your own property. In order to redistribute your wealth, they first needed the legal authority to take it, and that was the entire purpose of the 16th Amendment. Once they had a method by which to steal your wealth, they needed the ability to make it easier to redistribute it, and so the 17th Amendment was passed, providing for direct election of Senators, turning them into a more democratic institution. From that moment on, the character of American government began changing from a representative republic into a democracy as a precursor to a police-state.

What Lerner and the other Occupiers in this clip have understood is that in order to have the police and welfare state they want, they must first destroy your liberties, and that one of the reasons you will fight them is because you know that without them, capitalism, the means of your existence, cannot last. Last fall, I received a number of comments here from Occupy-sympathetic posters who assured me that OWS is not anti-capitalist. Guess again. This video proves it, and it does so very easily.

These are people who have a clear understanding of what they are after, and frankly, I think too many Americans have been intentionally mis-educated as to the proper form and function of our government precisely in order to permit these people to make such statements. You see, they’re right, and while it may seem shocking to some who think there’s no difference, this is why Americans must begin to arm themselves with the truth. These people are out to make us into a democracy, but that is not the form in which we were constituted. Our nation is a constitutional, federal, representative republic. Capitalism is only possible here because we adopted that form. This has led to our great wealth and prosperity, but if we wish to grow it or even keep it, we will need to retain our constitutional form of government. Occupy Wall Street understands the distinction, but if you wish to keep your country, you had better learn it, and fight for it too.

On Tuesday evening, Mark Levin posed a question on his radio show that bears serious consideration by we conservatives, and I think it’s time we discuss it. It’s not a matter of winning any longer, but whether we can stave off disaster. What Levin wondered aloud was whether our nation might be saved at all. He asked if it is too late, because there are too few people remaining who will oppose the advance of statism. Are we too few? Is it too late? Is the America we had known doomed? If so, what will we have instead? Our Republic stands on the brink of collapse, and the question we now face is what we can do about it. The signs are all around us: If we don’t turn things around in 2012, it may be that we never will.

Identifying the problem we face is simple, and it’s really what Alexis de Tocqueville proposed when he wrote that if the Democracy In America. Among all of the other important and prescient things he warned, these may have been the two we should have etched in stone on the steps of Congress, and on every class-room door in the country:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

That helps to describe our predicament, and this punctuates it:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville

Our nation is now just more than 200 years on from the adoption of our current constitution, and it seems that the cause of Tocqueville’s warning is being realized before our eyes. Barack Obama is effectively a dictator, overturning laws by failing to enforce them, and by promulgating regulations that have no legal basis in authority under our Constitution. Our people, a majority of them, live substantially by taking from others, and those who produce their living have been indoctrinated to supine servitude. This isn’t the nation of our founding, and our current president’s enmity to the constitution to which he has sworn an oath demonstrates our dire situation. Many judges no longer see any reason to restrain themselves to the content or context of the laws on the basis of which they’re allegedly ruling, and they reach out to international case law for precedents that conflict with our own constitution. Under these conditions, our Republic cannot survive, much less flourish, and we are headed for darkness.

Part of what my professional life entails is the process of evaluating threats and vulnerabilities, and projecting organization capabilities for confronting them. Applying that technique to our current situation, for individuals who consider themselves conservative, never mind libertarian, I think we’re going to see a revolution of radical statists, and I believe this has been the aim of George Soros and his pack of radical cohorts. Our options are going to be just three, and you had better begin to consider them:

Submit – Accept the country is going to become a radical socialist state complete with a police-state front

Flee – Leave the country in search of friendly shores that will accept you

Fight – Take up arms against i, risking life, limb, and property

These aren’t pleasant options, no matter which we consider, but let’s look at them. To submit would mean to maintain immediate physical safety, but it also means giving up virtually all personal sovereignty. I’m not cut out for this option, because I’m not one who respects claims of arbitrary authority over my life, or the way in which I choose to live it. I’m not one who abides by theft, whether carried out by a hoodlum in a darkened alleyway, or in the open by a federal bureaucrat. I don’t accept the idea that my life, liberty, and property are rightly subject to the aggression of other men, whether alone, or as a mob. This means that for me, I’m not inclined to submit, but every person will be forced to make their own choices. I fear too many will lie down in order to avoid harm, because in point of fact, the last century has been a progression of this sort of incremental surrender.

I don’t wish to surrender my country. I’m not the sort to flee from tyranny, although I must admit that I’ve done so before. I live out in the country precisely because I could not abide the growing tyranny in a municipality that orders its residents to have so many shrubs, so many trees, and what sort of decorations they can place on their own properties. I could not abide it, so I moved a short way out of the city, and in a matter of a decade, that city annexed properties quickly advancing upon me. At that point, I moved my family and my horses to an even more remote locale, and set up the farm where I expect that I will find some peace for the remainder of my days. This won’t be the case, however, if the federal government becomes the sort of coercive police state that leftists desire. There will be no escape to the country, and the only choice will be to flee the country altogether.

As I’ve reported, there have been some people, including filmmaker James Cameron who have fled to New Zealand, but the problem for most of us is that few can afford that move, and countries like New Zealand are smart enough to refuse easy immigration. Where then shall we go? The geographical isolation that has served America as a protection promises to serve now as a prison. Canada? Mexico? These are our choices, and neither looks very promising to most Americans. I can’t imagine that Mexico will offer much promise, and Canada won’t absorb us all. In my view, this sort of flight isn’t feasible for me, or for most Americans, which then brings us along to the option nobody wants to consider.

Fighting a counter-revolution is a deadly affair, particularly when the power of government is in the hands of the revolutionaries. From the outset, they will have command of the entire military, the police, and indeed, the entire array of government institutions, and since the media serves the revolution in most important ways, they’ve already created a willing propaganda arm. They control the horizontal and the vertical, so communications will become an impossibility. How do you wage a war against such a force? How is it possible to win? There is a very good reason that peoples the world over flee from or submit to large scale national social tyrannies: These are easier than fighting. These pose less danger.

What sort of country have ours become that we must even consider the revolutionary tyranny that is now creeping toward us, gathering inertia? I do not wish to seem as though I’m a doomsayer, but the truth is that we’re in very real national distress. Across the vast expanses of this country, there are probably fewer than one in six who I would consider committed patriots who believe we should maintain this republic as framed by our constitution, but still fewer who are willing to fight to preserve it. I doubt we could must five million patriots who would step forward and take up arms in defense of the republic, and make war against the people who have slowly usurped our system of government.

I am not asking or urging anybody to do anything, except think. I’d like you to consider the meaning of all of these things, and what you are willing to do to preserve what we all claim to love so dearly. Is our liberty to be abandoned without a fight? Is our freedom really to be eclipsed in this generation? Why are we going on quietly about our lives? The Tea Party was launched with the intention of creating a push-back, but the Tea Party has been largely silent in the last year. The problem is that without some rallying cry, we’re sliding more quickly toward the national catastrophe that now awaits in the gaping maw of the social welfare police-state. The other problem faced by those who would be inclined to fight if it comes to it is that we don’t have a single bright line for the trigger for a fight. What is that trigger? What is the thing that if the government undertakes, we would immediately respond with war?

This reminds me of the story of Wyatt Earp standing down a mob: “Sure, you’ll get me in a rush, but who wants to be first?” This is a question nobody likes to consider, because nobody wants to be first. Perhaps that will change, and perhaps it’s not yet as bad as that implies, but at some point, we’ll reach that climax at the pace in which we’re now rushing toward tyranny. All I’m suggesting to my fellow Americans is that now is the time to think these things through. What will we do in defense of our constitution when those sworn to uphold it decide instead to set it aside? What will be that condition under which we will no longer abide the transgressions? It’s easy to make brave oaths, today in the shrinking protection our liberties provide, but if our social compact is to be dissolved, it will no longer be a matter of oaths but instead a course of actions that we must consider.

It’s impossible to argue with a straight face that there’s any real similarities between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and yet that is the contention of some who allege that both are protest movements aimed at reform. If that’s the extent of their similarity, those who claim this as the basis for a relationship between the two are stuck in superficial characteristic that permit one to claim that an orange and a basketball are nearly the same. The Tea Party is predicated on the idea that the best government is that which governs least, while the Occupiers, to the degree you can discern any central agenda, are concerned only with tearing portions of the private sector down.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the dissimilarities far outweigh superficial observations, yet this is the argument you get from leftist shills. Other superficial differences include that the majority of both groups is Caucasian, and male, but in demographic terms, this is the end of similarities. The Tea Party folks are somewhat older, and somewhat more settled in life, and have already engaged in productive activities for most of their lives, while it seems Occupiers seem to be those who haven’t quite yet figured out what they want to be when they finish growing up. If that seems a bit condescending, I will confess that I’m caught, but only because that is my own observation.

The key distinction between the two groups stems from this: The Tea Party has a generic ideological and philosophical basis that its numbers understand, whereas the Occupiers seem to have a scatter-shot approach to issues, and if you examine any of them in isolation from the others, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to learn anything about the beliefs of the group, except perhaps that they all think they deserve something, somehow provided by others. They want their student loans forgiven, or they want banks closed down, or they want capitalism brought to heel under the boot of statism. They abhor globalization, but simultaneously say they’re in favor of free trade. They say they want opportunities, but they have squandered many by their own admissions.

In short, while it’s quite easy to make out what the Tea Party wants, it’s no so easy to understand anything about the Occupiers’ demands, because theirs are a moving target, and they seem to modify them daily. They have no electoral agenda, except perhaps that they generically favor Obama, but none of them can tell you why with any sort of conviction. In all, I find it odd that anybody would take serious such a comparison, until you understand how thoroughly the Occupiers failed. They were ginned up to be the left’s answer to the Tea Party, but as the record shows, their behavior in public and private spaces brought them no shortage of negative coverage. It’s so bad that they don’t even bother pretending there is a degree of moral superiority as occurred at the outset, but instead seek to improve their position by the comparison, attaching themselves to Tea Party by way of false claims of similar purpose.

Of course, now that they’ve seen how badly they’ve been received by the American people, a number of Occupiers are now, belatedly joining in on the anti-Obama bandwagon. As Yahoo reported, Obama has brought the two groups together, but only because increasingly, both are now opposing him. Even in this, however, they’re not really together, as the demands of Occupiers seems to be for the President to move even further left. Clearly, that’s not a message the Tea Party will endorse. It’s simply not true to say that the two groups are similar, and even the Yahoo article goes on to admit that this is the case. Still, it’s interesting to watch the purveyors of leftwing propaganda try to paint the Occupy Wall Street movement as a younger, grungier Tea Party, but until its members learn how to find jobs and pay their own bills, never mind bath, it’s going to remain a hard sell.

We are under constant attack by Barack Obama’s administration. He is rapidly converting the United States into a vulnerable, weak nation that cannot defend itself against external threats, but polices its own people with an iron fist. Evidence of this thesis comes from all quarters, and conservatives are placing all their hopes in the coming presidential election. The thinking is that if only we can get the right candidate, and if only we can nominate and elect that candidate, once in office, that person will change everything. Ladies and gentlemen, if you believe it will be so simple, you’re sadly mistaken. This isn’t going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen without pain, but if you want to defeat Barack Obama, you will need to learn one word, and make it stick for all times, irrespective of the cost. You must learn to say “no.”

The Obama radicals intend to overturn 230 years of liberty. They now inspect brown-bag lunches brought to school by small children, making sure the meal complies with the Department of Health and Human Services(or Michelle Obama.) There is only one way to defeat such a thing, and parents in the country need to find some ‘intestinal fortitude’ and take ownership over the lives of their children, as should have been the case all along. Say “No.” Don’t send your kids to these schools. Organize sick-outs. Organize whatever is needed. All you need to do to stop this is to refuse to comply with it. Refuse.

Obamacare can be defeated in exactly the same way. Refuse. Refuse to buy insurance. Refuse to pay their fines. Refuse. The only word you need is “no,” but saying it, and sticking to it is the harder part of the chore. Everything the leftists do requires your participation and consent. Don’t give it. Don’t participate. Then their only option is to round you all up, jail you, or kill you if you decline. Let me ask you bluntly: Do you favor life as a slave? That is the only option remaining if you accept their assault on your life. I’m not suggesting you do this all tomorrow, but you should begin to prepare to do it when the government finally, inevitably arrives at that line in the sand across which you will not step.

It’s time you begin to turn this around on the leftists. Call them what they are: Torturers and rapists and murderers. All they have is naked force, and they’re not as frightened of using it as you are of refusing to comply. When people of faith are told that they must fund contraception that violates their conscience, it’s time to admit that you have nothing but a shell to lose, but with Obamacare, even that will be theoretical. Your wallet is not yours. Your home is not yours. Your life is not yours. One by one, bit by bit, the radical left is taking over. They are preparing to sweep away all constitutional constraints upon their actions. What are you doing to prepare? How will you resist? These are questions that you must confront.

Here’s the dirty secret none of them wish you to know, and it’s important to your frame of mind with respect to their attack on your values, your rights, and your lives. What the left hides from you is that in order for them to have power, you must submit. This is not the same submission to the laws you know and respect, that merely require you not do a wrong to others. This is a submission to aggressive laws that demand performance of some sort by you. This is the secret. Their attacks on you via the law require you to act. The laws you honor merely require that you not act in ways that cause harm to others. You do not steal, nor do you defraud others, and you certainly don’t murder. Their laws require you to take specific measures, to act on behalf of their policy agendas, either via your wallet, or via your compliance with their demands.

Therefore, this must be your standard in measuring which laws you must continue to obey, and which have only the power over you that you give them. I am not advocating anarchy, but instead a careful examination of laws on the basis that they either do or do not comply with the context the framers of our constitution laid down as the basis for all our laws. Again, I am asking you to think this through because the time will come when you will need to know, and you won’t necessarily have time to think it through later, or deliberate it much. This is your time to prepare, but the preparations mustn’t be nearly those necessary to survive off the grid, but to survive resisting the tyranny that is now unfolding.

Just as in your personal life, where you must draw clear boundaries lest others run over you, in this sense you must also know what it is you will refuse to do when the law makes demands. A number of Catholics and others of faith are now preparing to make such a stand. They have decided on drawing a line, and I want to warn you that some will abandon the line they have drawn, but others will refuse to walk back the boundaries they have laid down. This is the distinction, and it comes down to the principles you hold dear.

The left lives in fear of you discovering your own power. The left lives in dread of waking up in a world where you have learned to say “no” and mean it. That’s it. That’s your power. It is born of knowing what lines you will not cross no matter their threats and their coercion. Once you know this, there is nothing they can do to you that you cannot resist. I do not promise you painless resistance to tyranny, but I am telling you that it can be defeated. Start small to learn how well it works. Learn to make a fuss. Learn to call attention to their aggression. Learn to scream at the top of your lungs without shame “No means NO!” Place them in their proper frame, as murders, as rapists, and as thieves.

I must admit that I don’t quite understand this one yet, because while we entered the fray in Libya on the basis of the Samantha Power argument of a “Responsibility to Protect,” the idea that nations had a duty to protect a people from a tyrannical regime, this same theory doesn’t apparently apply in Syria. Instead, after a meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hillary Clinton said in a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Ahment Davutoglu that there would be no troops sent to Syria without the consent of the Syrian government. Why is one brutal thug’s regime exempt, while the other was not? While leftist protesters marched under the banner of “no blood for oil” in successive wars initiated by Republican presidents, there’s no similar outrage now that it has become patently obvious that this is the only justification for the differential in policy: Syria has no oil. Libya has plenty. It’s either that, or something more nefarious.

This is another example of the apparent contradictions in Obama’s foreign policy. When the people of Iran were rising up, Obama said nothing, and did nothing. In Syria, we’re getting some words from the State Department, but nothing of substance, and it seems there’s no intention on the part of this administration to have a consistent policy. We surely didn’t wait for Gaddafi’s consent before bombing in Libya. We were trying to bomb him! Meanwhile, Assad is every bit as monstrous as Gaddafi, and perhaps worse, yet there we are wearing kid gloves. This doesn’t make any sense at all unless one begins to account for the differences between the two countries, or leaders.

Is there some reason the Obama administration favors Syria’s Assad? If one applies the principles of the idea called “Responsibility to Protect(R2P,) one must wonder as thousands of civilians in Syria have been murdered in the streets over the last few months. If Gaddafi was a rabid dog who needed to be removed for the safety of his country’s people, why not Assad? Why is he exempt from a similar fate?

Don’t misunderstand: I am not advocating an attack by NATO on Syria, but I find it curious that the same people who less than one year ago could not wait to pound Gaddafi into submission before he was slaughtered at the hands of a mob(as he deserved) are now reluctant about treating Bashar al-Assad in similar fashion. This discontinuity in policy means something, just as the reluctance to criticize Ahmedinejad in Iran meant something, but it’s not yet clear what the meaning is. Cynical folk would point to the Libyan oil, but even if that is a factor, I don’t think it’s the only one. Something else must account for this differential in policy. Could it be that Assad has something else Obama wants? Could it be related to the proximity of Syria to Israel?

Time will tell, but when one sees such distinct and different actions by lefties in similar circumstances, one knows there’s something more to the story. Leftists are simply too stuck in their ideological ruts to act this way without ulterior motives.

Many of us wonder how it is that people who ought to have known better can possibly bring themselves to vote for the statists who are undermining the country. Much like when the Titanic went down one-hundred years ago this coming tax-day, the elite are boarding the life-boats ahead of all the rest of us second-class and cargo-hold passengers. Another of the rich and famous is making his plans for exit to New Zealand, as this time Hollywood director James Cameron is looking to get out of Dodge. This should clear up the seeming contradiction, and just as I have told you that the elite don’t fear Obamacare as you must, if you love your life, for the same reasons, these same people don’t fear the collapse of the United States. They’ll simply get themselves to the front of the line for the lifeboats, as America hits the last in a string of icebergs and heads to the bottom.

Don’t worry! They love you! They have compassion for you. It’s just that, well, they don’t want their necks stretched when the rioting begins, so they’re going to get the hell out, which is an option that won’t be open to you. No, you won’t be able to liquidate your assets and pull out for safer harbor, because after all, in a collapsing economy with a crumbling currency, to whom will you sell your homes and your chattel, and in the world in which you’ll be selling it, what do you suppose it will be worth?

No, these elites can come up with all the excuses under the sun, but their actions speak louder than their words. It’s about to get exceedingly ugly, and as they lock you down in the cargo hold, singing the praises of the captain of our stricken ship of state, we’re stuck. They’ve made this mess, and now it will be we who will pay for it. Don’t worry too much, however, because we’re safe until we see them actually flee for their faraway havens. At that point, we’ll know. You shouldn’t fail to prepare as best you can.

As if we hadn’t already known it, one of Obama’s college cohorts has come forward to say that Barack Obama had indeed been a radical, full-bore communist. While none of this may be particularly surprising to those of us who have paid attention to Obama’s development as a presidential candidate going at least as far back as his 2004 Democrat Convention speech, I suspect the average American may not have the slightest idea just how thoroughly radical their President’s credentials really are. This owes to the media that has covered for him, rather than covering him, both in looking at his history and in examining his friends and associations. Having watched this administration in action for nearly three years, more Americans are realizing something is wrong with President Obama’s view of the country, of values, and of the world in which we live. What John Drew offers is a bit of insight into the nature of Barack Obama’s real beliefs and intentions.

Well, consider the words of John Drew, a man whom writer Paul Kengor calls “Obama’s Missing Link.” A contemporary of Obama’s at Occidental College three decades ago, Drew says that he himself was a Marxist at the time — and part of Obama’s inner circle. And what does he reveal?

Obama was an “ardent” “Marxist-Leninist” who “was in 100 percent, total agreement with [his] Marxist professors,” said Drew.In fact, Drew states that while he was a more nuanced Marxist who tried to convince Obama that old-style communist revolution was unrealistic in the West, the future President would have none of it and considered Drew a “reactionary.”

“Reactionary?” That’s typical Marxist lingo, but as some have offered, he was younger then, and of course he might have been a good deal more radical in his youth than as he matured. What is the evidence that this has been the case? After all, among his first round of appointments were a crowd of Marxists and communists that would have made “Uncle Joe” proud. Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, John Holdren, and Samantha Powers(Sunstein’s wife) come immediately to mind, but there are many more. As Van Jones admitted publicly, you have to “drop the radical pose to achieve the radical ends.”

I’m certain that this bunch of Alinskyite radicals has done precisely that, and Obama most of all. As I explained in examining Obama’s pro-socialism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, this president believes the left-wing propaganda. One bit of information that has turned up since that speech is that the Weather Underground had its own newspaper back in the 1970s, called Osawatomie. No kidding. If you visit the site where this is detailed, you’ll find that much of the jargon and lingo of Obama’s 2008 campaign and his presidency is repeated here. The point? He’s a true believer, a man committed on principle to destroying the United States as we have known it. The key to understanding this is what Drew actually said about his commitment: He believes an “old-style communist revolution” is a possibility in the US. Consider that statement, and all it implies, and then remember that Bill Ayers was among those who were planning just such a revolution, and as early as the 1970s, were imagining how to kill off the estimated 25 million people who would not peaceably submit.

I submit to you that if it was your intention to have an old-style communist revolution, if you could capture ruling power by any means, you would be able to wreak havoc on any nation, its economy, and its people, and the reason to do so would be to splinter the civil society into warring factions, or to exploit such factions as may already have existed, and magnify them. Any nation is ripe for revolution when its people are sufficiently primed, and dissatisfaction is the best way to prime them. Obama’s policies are surely driving greater dissatisfaction as the prices of food and fuel skyrocket, the value of the dollar plummets, and real unemployment is at greater than 16%, and by some calculations, substantially higher. The nature of statist revolutions requires calamity, catastrophe, and emergencies, under the auspices of which governments extend their control.

“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of “Emergency”. It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini… The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.” – Hoover’s Memoirs: The Great Depression 1929-1941

What Hoover identified is the ultimate methodology upon which collectivist demagogues naturally rely: The emergency. Under emergencies, whether actual or fictional, governments rely upon the extraordinary power to suspend liberties and natural rights, and to otherwise violate laws it is ordinarily sworn to uphold. Barack Obama is setting us up for just such an event. What do you suppose is the purpose of the Occupiers? Their role is to make the American people call upon their government for aid. These poor useful idiots, most of them, are too blind to see that they will be the first people sacrificed in the name of such an emergency.

It’s time to face the full horrors of what Obama’s presidency holds in store. Most of us are accustomed to believing that “it couldn’t happen here,” but the truth is that it is happening here. It’s time we put a stop to it, and defeating Obama in 2012 is just the start.

Those who have been paying attention have known the Euro is in deep trouble, and much of it stems from the way in which is was created. Too many member states were admitted which had currency that was overvalued for the merger, and they’ve done nothing to curb ridiculous fiscal policies in those countries. This includes nations such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, but also to a lesser degree, France. Now, it’s time to pay the piper, and predictably, nobody wants to do so. Governments in Europe are now forced to consider what will happen if the Euro falls and the member states wind up reverting to their prior forms of currency. Some estimates suggest that GDP would decline in Europe among member states by as much as half, or more, and that widespread unemployment on a scale that would dwarf any previous depressions in scale and depth. In short, they’re now planning for a calamity, complete with riots and revolutions, and the reason is simple: It’s now a very real possibility. From a story in the UK Telegraph:

The Financial Services Authority this week issued a public warning to British banks to bolster their contingency plans for the break-up of the single currency.

Some economists believe that at worst, the outright collapse of the euro could reduce GDP in its member-states by up to half and trigger mass unemployment.

Analysts at UBS, an investment bank earlier this year warned that the most extreme consequences of a break-up include risks to basic property rights and the threat of civil disorder.

“When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Of course, many Americans are not moved by these tidings, somehow believing that we are insulated from a European crisis, but nothing could be further from the truth. If such drastic circumstances arise in Europe, the effects will be global, and so will be the civil unrest that accompanies it. This is the kind of calamity from which there is virtually no escape, anywhere on Earth. In such an environment, not only would our own exports to Europe would collapse, but also we would find our own currency in free-fall because we have so thoroughly tied it to the Euro. The defaults alone would wreck our own currency, and leave the United States in a similar situation.

Reuters is now carrying a story about the French and German effort to establish some fiscal controls to stave off a calamity, but the truth is that this will likely be too little, too late. Some authorities realize that this will be a stalling tactic at best, and are using the time it may buy to prepare for what is increasingly being seen as an inevitable collapse. From the Telegraph:

A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

“It’s in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare,” the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest.

As is now obvious, this is all a play for time. They’re buying time, but they’re not going to save things, and the Europeans seem to know it. The question thus becomes: What is our own government doing to prepare? What are they telling you to do in preparation? Nothing. Your own federal government is behaving irresponsibly in the face of this looming crisis.

For three years or more, the hand-writing has been on the wall, and our own government has obfuscated and lied about the direction of things, but has done little to prepare the American people for the possibilities now in the offing. Let me suggest to you that the recent sporadic reports of spikes in the purchase of survival supplies is an indicator that the American people have begun to figure it out without governmental warnings. No rational person can examine what’s been happening on the global economic and financial front and not have some sense of the very real dangers now accumulating. It remains a prudent course of action for Americans to prepare for any sort of emergency, but with the real possibility of complete Euro-zone collapse now seemingly imminent, prudence would dictate an uptick in preparedness planning. Our own currency has been tied too closely to the Euro currency to avoid the consequences of its collapse.

I received an interesting phone call from a friend I hadn’t talked with in a month or so, and it wasn’t that his questions were so surprising as it was that his timing seemed so preposterously coincidental. Another acquaintance had recently forwarded me the article from the American Thinker by John Fricke, Should I buy a gun? This brings me to the subject of my long-time friend’s call. It wasn’t that he wanted a gun, as he has enough firearms to defend his family, but in a related matter, he wanted my opinion on the subject of preparedness, and to examine with him his own list of emergency items. In short, he wanted to compare notes, because like the author of the American Thinker piece, he has begun to wonder if he ought not become a good bit more prepared.

I told him what I tell anybody who asks my opinion: More prepared is better than less prepared, and prepared at all is better than unprepared. That’s a truism, but the point should be clear, and it’s something we’ve discussed together here before: Given the state of the country, Americans should be prepared in to survive for a time without any outside assistance.

Americans should be prepared at a moment’s notice to defend themselves, their families, and their property. They should be prepared to survive without the benefit of a grocery store for weeks, or even months. They should have all the things necessary to “rough it” without electricity for heating or cooling or refrigeration. They should be prepared to administer basic first aid, and have at least the bare minimum of survival items. As I suggested to my friend, list the top 100 things he and his family members use daily, and what would be the low-tech, sustainable substitutes. Radios, flashlights, candles, and all of those things come easily to mind, but less obvious things like soaps, disinfectants, water purification tablets, and other basic necessities are often overlooked. He assured me that he has a generator, but I asked him bluntly: What’s the fuel consumption rate on your generator? How many days worth of fuel do you expect to have on hand? He looked paused and said: “You know, that’s a good point. I can only store so much fuel, and it goes bad sitting in gas cans.”

I explained to him how we too have a small generator, but we also recognize we can’t store enough fuel for any protracted period, so we rotate what we have stored through our vehicles, filling the vehicles from the stored cans of fuel, and refilling them instead of the vehicles. This keeps our survival supply fresh, and it enables us to ensure we’ll have a little fuel for a bad spot. It won’t last long, but at least I’ll brew that coffee every day for a few weeks until that runs out too, and we convert to instant.

One of the things I told my friend, and in his case it’s not so important, is that many people who really don’t routinely hunt, or otherwise use firearms will frequently purchase a gun, and some ammo, put it on a shelf, and never look at it again. Let me suggest to my readers that if you happen to be in that group, or close to it, or you have family members who are, you should take some time to actually learn the safe use and maintenance of your firearms. It’s one thing to be able to shoot it when there is no time pressure and no particular reason but sport, but it is another when you are faced with the situation of defending yourself or your loved ones. It’s best to spend a few boxes of ammunition preparing for self-defense than to discover too late that you haven’t prepared.

Do you have an infant or small children? They have particular nutritional needs that may well not be met by a standard adult ration. You also need to think about other items. Special medications? Do you have pets? Most of us do. What will you do when the dog food runs out? Or will you be dining on Kung Pao Fido every day for a week? My apologies, but there is a point at which we must consider the very real question of what becomes of our pets, and maybe my tasteless remark will be the thing that causes you to consider it. Whatever you can do to prepare for that possibility now will potentially save you and those you love many hardships later.

Most Americans live in tightly packed neighborhoods. Are your neighbors preparing? What of those in your church congregations, or other faith-based or social organizations in your community? If you alone on your block are prepared, and things take a turn for the worse on the national level, how long do you suppose you’ll maintain your preparations if too many of your neighbors are not so well-prepared? Your wit may be the life of the block party on the 4th of July, but when the dark of winter comes, and yours are the only lights lit on the street, and some of your occupation-inclined neighbors become annoyed at your wealth of light, how long do you suppose it will be before somebody decides you need to share your wealth?

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t wish to frighten anybody, but having served in the Army, and knowing the value of the Boy Scouts’ motto, I want you to consider this all very carefully. I know that many of you will have friends and neighbors like some of mine, who are perpetual grasshoppers to your diligent anthill. I know. Still, encouraging them to consider the reality of our situation is perhaps worthwhile. Tell them to start putting up a few extra cans of food on each shopping trip. The worst thing that can happen is they have a lot extra to give to a canned-food charity drive. In a pinch, it may be the difference between a satisfying if not altogether sublime dining occasion, and the feeling of empty in the pit of their bellies.

Of course, there are those who will never prepare. They simply assume that either they’ll somehow “get theirs” or that nothing bad will ever happen. Watch out for these people. These are the folks who will later come calling with ill intent, and you shouldn’t take for granted that they’ll do you no harm. An empty belly has motivated many people to acts of evil. The best thing about being prepared is the ability to be a good neighbor in hard times. Even if you’ve prepared only enough for you and your own family, by being prepared, you can reduce the burdens you might otherwise place on others. Readers of this blog are the prepared sort anyway, but what my friend’s call and John Fricke’s article should remind us is that we do indeed live in dangerous times. There’s no substitute for preparation, and whether it’s the ability to defend yourselves, or feed yourselves, you should be mindful that the world the statists have created is subject to turmoils from which none of us will be immune.

I’m sure I’m not as prepared as I would like to be, but I’m positive I’m better prepared than many. What about you? Are you ready? Part of our country seems prepared to “go Galt” while the rest continues as though nothing unusual is happening. It’s a sign of the times in which we live that crises of monumental proportions are brewing, and so many Americans remain woefully unprepared.